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Diarmuid

 

 

 

Diarmuid [DIER-mid]: an Irish mythological hero with the power to make women fall instantly in love with him

 

 

 

Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a suit. But I wasn’t going to show up here in anything less.

I even wrote that in my will. Left instructions in black and white to whoever survives me to bury me in my favourite pair of worn leather boots, denim jeans, a plain white tee and my black leather jacket that was like a second skin, leather soft as summer butter.

The collars of these ridiculous button-up shirts were always too tight around my neck, the material strained around my barrel chest like chains making me feel like I couldn’t move my arms properly.

I felt like a fake. The stylish effect of a suit looked at odds with my shoulder-length dark hair currently pulled back into a scruffy bun. The hem of my black pants barely hid the scuffed toes of my favourite boots. Even though I shaved that morning, I couldn’t hide the long afternoon shadow across my jaw. The cuffed long sleeves couldn’t hide the ink glaring out onto the backs of my hands. Yeah, I wasn’t fooling anyone in this penguin outfit.

I stepped through the front door of a large house in the north of Limerick on the Emerald Isle’s west coast, ignoring the curious looks from the parents and students huddled around near the door. I didn’t look like a parent, not one who would have a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old child. But nobody stopped me. Nobody dared to. Sometimes there were advantages to looking the way I did. People rarely questioned me.

Over their heads, I spotted Timmy’s mother waving at me from across the living room. I pushed my bulk through the crowd, knocking into shoulders and nearly knocking over a scowling parent with my elbow.

“Diarmuid, so glad you could make it,” Timmy’s mother said as I stepped into the space beside her. She held an e-cig in her right hand; in the other she held a pint glass with the dregs of a pale lager at the bottom, the glass wet with condensation around her glaring pink fingernails, her glassy eyes and slight sway telling me that it wasn’t her first.

She was wearing a vivid pink and white floral dress, a matching jacket over her fleshy shoulders, her unruly auburn curls tamed into one of those fancy updos.

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Mrs O’Leary.” I leaned in to dry-kiss her cheek, getting a whiff of her rose-heavy perfume.

“Come on now, call me Mary. You make me feel ancient with all this Mrs O’Leary shite.”

I grinned and enquired after the rest of her brood—four boys, Timmy was the eldest. Mrs O’Leary answered happily.

“And where’s the lovely Ava?” she asked.

“She was going to meet me here,” I said, looking at my watch, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “She’s probably just running late.”

Again.

I stabbed a curt where r u? into my phone and hit send.

“Have you seen Timmy? He’ll be wantin’ to see ye now. Oh, there he is.”

I glanced over to where Mrs O’Leary was pointing with her e-cig. My gaze fixed upon the eighteen-year-old boy-man making his way towards us with a grin slashed across his freckled face.

“Jesus, lad,” I said, pulling Timmy in for a quick hug and slapping him on the shoulder. “Look at ye.” I pulled back, shaking my head as I eyed him over. His suit was secondhand—I knew because I’d gone with him to buy it just for his Debs Ball—but it fit him well, looking nearly new. “You clean up alright.”

“So do you, Mr B.”

I snorted. Even after three years, he still insisted on calling me that instead of my first name. “You excited for the Debs Ball, are you? Where’s your pretty date?”

Timmy’s cheeks flushed pink. He’d liked this girl for almost a year before I convinced him to ask her out. “She’s attending another pre-drinks. I’m going to meet her there.”

“Right, well, I’ll let you get back to your friends now. You probably don’t want to spend your graduation celebrations with us oldies.” I slung my arm around his neck and pulled him to me for another hug. “I’m so proud of you,” I said just for him.

“Thanks to you, Mr B. I wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

This right here, this was why I fucking loved my job.

“You did it all, kid. I just gave you some direction.”

I pulled away. He ducked his head and I knew there were tears rimming his eyes. I cleared my throat, blinking back twin stings, and slapped him on his back just a little too hard. “Oh, go on now.”

He grinned, gave his ma a quick cuddle, her tears much less guarded, then strode off to a group of his friends, the world at his feet.

When he’d been assigned to me three years ago, he’d been an angry teen, furious at his father for up and leaving him and his ma, lashing out his only way of dealing with his messy turmoil. He’d was about to get kicked out of school for his behaviour. Now look at him, graduated high school with plans for a furniture-making apprenticeship.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, my spirit dipping when I read the text.

 

Ava: Sorry babe can’t make it have fun

 

“What’s wrong?” Mrs O’Leary asked.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and shook my head, forcing the smile back on my face. I wasn’t about to let my fucking problems take anything away from what should be an evening all about Timothy.

“Oh, nothing. Ava’s had something come up so she can’t make it,” I lied.

Then I changed the subject.

 

 

 

Later that evening, I pulled up on the street out front of my home, a cosy two-bed brick terrace house with a small patch of garden out front.

I had to mow our small lawn. I had to trim back those rose bushes that threatened to climb over the neighbour’s low wooden fence and start a riot. Ava had wanted roses. She’d promised she’d keep them trimmed and take care of them. I’d spent an entire day off breaking my back getting those thorny fuckers in the ground for her. She lost interest only weeks later.

Squinting at the grey drizzle that hung around this city like a bad smell, I could see two figures through the front window—Ava’s and another that looked like one of her work friends. I switched off the engine to my truck and climbed out, tempering my annoyance.

The sound of two women giggling hit me as I barged through the front door.

I walked into our small living room to find an utter mess. They’d set up camp, it looked like. Cold lumps of cheese in the bottom of a greasy pizza box along with eight or nine empty bottles of Bulmers cider littering the grey carpet.

Dee, one of Ava’s girlfriends from work, sat in my armchair, a ciggie in her hand, her dark hair blown out. I fucking hated it when people smoked in the house and Ava knew it. The smell of cigarette smoke brought back too many bad memories.

Anger swirled around in my gut. “You both been here all evening, have ya?”

“Yeah,” Dee slurred, oblivious to the tension snapping in the air like rubber bands, “Ava invited me over after work.”

“Did she now?” I turned towards my girlfriend of two years, her throat column bobbing as she avoided my eyes. She knew how much Timmy’s graduation meant to me. She promised she would come. She broke her promise.

“Babe,” Ava began, her voice climbing into a high-pitched whine, “it’s not—”

“Time to go home, Dee,” I growled.

Ava gasped. “Don’t you talk to her—”

“It’s you I’m thinking about, Ava. I don’t think you want your friend here for this…discussion, do you?”

Her normally thick lips thinned to a white slash across her made-up face.

Dee hopped up to her feet, her hands going to smooth down her jeans and grab her bag. “I probably should go anyways, Ava. Paddy will shit bricks if I’m home too late.”

I glared at my girlfriend as Dee hugged her goodbye, ignoring Dee when she called goodbye to me.

Ava turned to me the moment the door shut behind Dee. “You are such an asshole, Brennan.”

“You knew how much Timmy’s Debs celebrations meant to me. You promised you’d come.”

“I had a bad day at work, okay? Needed a drink.”

Every day for Ava was a bad day it seemed. Every day was some excuse. Some complaint.

“Besides, it was just some kid’s graduation. He’s not even your kid.”

Disbelief stabbed me. She didn’t get it. She didn’t understand that these kids assigned to me might not be my blood but they were my kids.

“You fucking promised me, Ava,” I roared.

“Baby…” Ava’s bottom lip started quivering. “Why are you yelling at me?”

Fuck. Now I felt like a shit.

The fight sagged out of me as Ava tottered towards me, still in her short skirt and blouse from her part-time work at the beauty salon. I stood like a stone as she collapsed in my arms.

“We just need a holiday,” she said into my shirt, her fingers roaming my chest, “you and me, baby. Somewhere warm. Somewhere nice. Majorca. Or Ibiza.”

“I can’t take a holiday right now.” My arm curled around her small waist and I pulled her closer.

She pouted up at me. “Yes, you can. You have so much leave accrued at your job.” She smiled, a twinkle growing in her eyes. “It could be more than just a holiday, you know?”

I stiffened. “What does that mean?”

“Just think how everyone will react when we come back all tanned and refreshed…and married.”

My arm dropped from around her body and I slid out of her grasp. “Now I need a drink.”

“Jesus, Diarmuid,” she snapped as she followed me into the kitchen, “we’ve been together for almost three years.”

I rubbed my forehead with my hands, a sudden pressure in my skull giving me a throbbing headache. “And it works, doesn’t it?” Most of the time.

“I swear to God, Diarmuid, if you’re stringing me along—”

“I’m not.”

I would do the right thing. It just didn’t feel like the right thing right now.

But that would change, right?